430 GogglesPisano's F430 Ownership Journey

The actuator is stuck to the gearbox with white or gray silicone (some kind of bond for metal to metal ) ; so every time it is removed for whatever reason you will have new silicone floating around in the gearbox and caught into that screen. It does not mean nobody removed it since the car was made.

 

I would just go to home depot to be honest and get some screws and washers... they get undone due to vibrations. I used some blue loctite which is not permanent to keep them in place. If you get a leak somewhere it will most likely hit that diffuser into the screws and will loosen up. IF you are talking about the 10mm screws that keep the diffuser in place towards front of car .

 

Do you mean the wavy washer??

 

I have to look. Maybe I'm missing those... been a while since I removed the diffuser.

 

I don't have those and never had them. My car was also to Ferrari for a check and they replaced some of the bolts underneath and did not use any of those spacers.

 

Yes, but when replacing original Ferrari bolts make sure to get "automotive" strength bolts to match or exceed the ones you currently have - as printed on the bolt head. Typically 8.8 is minimum, some are 12.9 etc. Most hardware store bolts are 5.8 - too weak.

 

Mine is an 08 and has those spacers as well

 

In my car, 2nd on cold start and first few minutes of driving is tough to use. But soon after it is like butter. What gear oil are you running, and how old? For shift tower, IMO I think it would look best in carbon or in matching leather.

 

In the close up think the silver works better but with the black dash it would be better to get a wider angle to see more of the interior, then it may make more sense.

Just my 2 cents, it doesn't bother me at all that the shifter and base are silver. They kind of stand out which I like. It is the center piece of the interior design. It should stand on its own, imho.

That said, very nice job on the black base!

 

Another vote for the standard silver, but perhaps it is just a biased look from being exposed to it over and over again. Just go with what you like!

2nd in mine is somewhat hard to engage within the first few minutes but after that is basically the same as the other gears. I think anyway, I have about a 30 min drive coming up later and can try to pay attention. But I think I read even factory gated ones are like this.

 

I'm local but with a factory gated 360, you can try if you'd like. Same transmission and linkage design right?

 

Joe, while there are some minor differences in shifting cables and their installation between 360 and F430, those are mostly cost cutting measures applied in F430 and functionally they are very close, not different enough to cause harder gear shifting. You have a Cambio Manuale (Dr S) early F430 kit which in fact is practically the same as the more expensive to produce early 360 parts. So shifting comparison to a factory 360 should be valid.

As the gearbox warms up, some internal parts expand with heat and change dimensions slightly. That could cause a poorly adjusted shifting to get worse with heat. Solution is to try to change the length of the blue cable inside the cabin slightly. Start increasing the length and continue if improvement, otherwise start shortening. That solves over 95% of hard shifting issues and makes that over 95% of customers happy.

In those under 5% or so of the cases where shifting adjustment is not helping, there are internal transmission issues. You may choose to just get used to it, specially if it's the same as in other Ferrari cars you test drive and the same as many others are getting, try various transmission fluids to mitigate the issue, or disassemble the transmission and fix it.

If you are already fully confident that the adjustment is perfect and if you have tried multiple transmission fluids, the next step is to separate the issues of concern - inside the transmission versus outside of the transmission/adjustments. With the car hot and difficult to shift into 2nd, disconnect the shifter cables at the transmission and try shifting it by hand by the actuator arms. If it is difficult to shift, you have internal problems. Try the same after the car cools off and confirm that the problem is gone.

 

And now we are getting deeper inside. I have a customer in UK (a high end Ferrari shop) which has purchased and installed multiple kits but in one case experienced a problem like the one above, and localizing the problem to be inside the transmission got it disassembled. It turned out, that Ferrari left a gear selector to be too thick inside the transmission. And it was expanding and dragging when hot. After a part of the selector was removed with a grinder, the car started shifting perfectly!

I have not seen anywhere numbering of the selector positions being published, so I took a transmission photo and numbered it, here it is (first public publication


Image Unavailable, Please Login

 

You can see in the photo which selectors are responsible for which gears. So in this case the 1-2 selector could be dragging onto one above or below it.

Of course it could also be other transmission wear, worn out synchronizers etc. Any transmission can get difficult to shift with wear, or could be difficult to shift right out of the factory like in the case described above. F1 hydraulics are very brutal and just push through anything. But in a manual car, additional resistance is easily felt.